Where We Are Now: The president of the board for the collapsed condominium building in Florida warned less than three months ago that the building had serious deterioration that would require residents to pony up millions of dollars in special assessments to fix.

  Referring to visible damage in the garage area, Jean Wodnicki wrote in a letter to residents that, “When you can visually see the concrete spalling (cracking), that means that the rebar holding it together is rusting and deteriorating beneath the surface.”

  As of this morning, 12 people are confirmed dead and 149 are still missing after seven days of search and rescue efforts.

  Wodnicki survived the collapse. Her letter to condo owners said, “The concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation got much worse, so extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated.”

  The condominium board and residents had dithered after receiving an assessment in 2018 that said the building needed serious repair. The estimated costs had grown to $16 million. Wodnicki wrote, “A lot of this work could have been done or planned for in years gone by. But this is where we are now.”

The Brink of Civil War: As American and other foreign troops pull out, the US commander in Afghanistan says the country hangs on the brink of a multi-sided civil war.

  “Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if it continues on the trajectory it’s on,” Gen. Austin Miller, told reporters during a news conference. “That should be a concern for the world.”

  It’s a predictable outcome. American and other foreign troops have been in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years, first pushing out the Islamist Taliban and then holding them at bay. They are relentless in their quest to re-take control of the country and take new ground every day. It’s always been a civil war.

  Roughly 650 U.S. troops are expected to remain in the country to provide security for diplomats.

Voting Debacle: A bit of chaos has been injected into the New York mayoral race after the board of elections announced that the lead held by former cop Eric Adams had narrowed, then removed the figures from their website saying  there’d been some kind of “discrepancy.”

  Later, the board clarified, saying they had accidentally counted 135,000 “test” ballots for its new ranked choice voting system. They’ve never done ranked choice before.

  The vote is for the Democratic nominee for mayor, who normally wins the ultimate election.  Adams held a good lead among people who voted in person, but that appeared to shrink as absentee ballots were counted. That’s just what you need when the former president is claiming massive vote fraud all over the country.

  The unofficial numbers yesterday had Adams leading Kathryn Garcia by just 15,908 votes, less than two percentage points, in the final round. Maya Wiley, who was second in the initial count, was third after elimination rounds. 

Eviction Notice: The Supreme Court declined the moratorium on tenant evictions that had been imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

  The vote was 5 to 4 with the court giving no reason. Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion saying that while he thought the CDC had exceeded its authority, “Because the C.D.C. plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application” filed by landlords, real estate companies and trade associations.

The Spin Rack: Fox News agreed to pay a $1 million penalty to settle sexual misconduct claims filed with the New York City Commission on Human Rights. A bundle of complaints several years ago led to the disgraced exits of Fox’s co-founder Roger Ailes, the once-powerful anchor  Bill O’Reilly. — Betting on its own future, and the future of air travel, United Airlines is buying 270 new narrow-body jets fromBoeing and Airbus. The company says this is the biggest jet purchase placed by a US airline in the past 10 years. — Tennis great Serena Williams limped out of Wimbledon in tears with an injured left ankle, giving up her attempt at her 24th Grand Slam singles title. — Gasoline prices are reaching a seven-year high going into the 4^th of July weekend. 

Tuckered Out: Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the reigning right wingnut on Fox News, claims that he is being spied on by the National Security Administration. He said on the air, “We heard from a whistleblower within the US government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”

  A sure way to build popularity on Fox News is to claim you are a feared enemy of the current Democratic administration. “Spying on opposition journalists is incompatible with democracy,” Carlson said. “If they are doing it to us, and again, they are definitely doing it to us, they are almost certainly doing it to others.”

  Carlson is pawning the fiction that he has actual sources for things he says on the air, and that the intelligence agency could track those sources.

  The NSA denies it, and interestingly, no one else in the press, even at Fox, has advanced the story.

Gonna Take You Higher: The world’s highest hotel – it’s 2,000 feet – opened in Shanghai, China. Previously, the world’s highest hotel was the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.

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